Sunday, 22 July 2018

Command, cajole, persuade . . .

Today I'll be finishing off an artwork

If this sounds a trifle blasé, it's because I try to think of it as not much different to building something - no big deal. It should stand up, and it should have impact, two important requirements of art as well as architecture.

It needs a little bit of fiddly stuff with red ink so I'm off to the shops.

As a previous post touched upon, context is often important when making art- or design-related decisions

Now that I have my guest bed up and running, I have chosen an installation piece that fits the space perfectly. This will be my next task: finishing it and installing it securely.

Has everyone seen 'badly photoshopped Timmy'?

https://twitter.com/chalametinart?lang=en

The bed is now stripped of its springy new duvet and shiny pillows

In fact it's entirely covered with a dustsheet and of course the reason is that I have two studio cats.

After an intense work day, I like to think I can take a few hours off: go to the launderette or something. What I call keeping the systems running in the background.

I often start a project by running through the steps of its making in my head. Time well spent.

As I started to make the bedhead I realised I had lost my reel of nylon suspension line needed to hang up the bedhead. A lot of my design clobber has had to move into the main room to make room for the bed. I was very tempted to 1. go to the park (but finish the washing up first). I know from experience that to choose 2. search high and low until you find it can lead to so much time lost that it qualifies as displacement activity.

Anyway, I was lucky yesterday and spotted the nylon in the right pigeonhole. The shelf had moved but not its contents.

My background by the way, before i took up art and design in a big way, is publishing. The deadlines are so tight that whenever i couldn't find my box of staples I'd have to choose 3. run to the shops and buy a replacement. The complete answer to the how to handle a delay in the making process is actually 1., 2., or 3., depending on the context.

The bedhead is up

(Full story [and answer to the puzzle posted earlier] later.)

Remind me what we're doing today?

Only joking. My design project today is to fit the bedhead to the new bed I'm building.Unexpected delays, interruptions, or too little sleep are completely normal, even givens, for any project, small or large. And, oh, distractions . . .. How do we deal with them all?Well here's a multiple choice puzzle:A designer (the undersigned) has mislaid a vital piece of stuff needed to make the bedhead.What does he/she do?

go to the park (but finish the washing up first)

go to the shop and buy a replacement

search high and low until he/she finds it

Which is 'correct' 1, 2 or 3?

Bedmaking, part 1

Cleared the area (see pic below), built the bed. Now to dress the bed. Progress on building a bedWe're halfway there. The bed frame and mattress are in. The bedhead is not in. As a designer I reserve the right to make that a surprise. Conventional bedheads are boring, have you noticed that? New pillows are on order. My spare pillows have all been sat upon at one time or another by my two cats. Lights, space for storing clothes and a dressing area are all in the planning stage. Here's a sight of the 'before'

If you notice some Felix cat boxes it's because they're made of the kind of firm cardboard you can upcycle as containers. By the way, you know the joke about minimalist living, don't you. All you need are two apartments, one for minimalist living and one for storing your stuff. I work at home. My studio is actually a screened off area of my living room. The most important consideration is the floor. You have to be practical. I've got that heavy duty lino you find in lifts and airports. It's an Alice-in-Wonderland space, sometimes it feels large and sometimes tiny depending on what I'm working on. At the moment it's a bed. I am building a large bed so that I can have two friends to stay this autumn. One of them has a bad back and can't really cope with sleeping on a futon sofa. The logistics of turning a triple-purpose room for living, working and eating into a quadruple-purpose room by adding a sleeping area are interesting. But on the plus side there's no television to accommodate.

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About

Sally Crawford is a blogger and installation artist based in London. She makes regular trips to The Hague writing about art and design and, as if that's not enough, she is slowly converting her London home-studio into a 3-dimensional artwork.